Turner and his delighted regulars soon made an unofficial store mascot out of the surprising boy, whose ravenous appetite for books and steel-trap memory made him somewhat of a wunderkind. For many of the regular patrons, the store was not only a place to slake their craving for reading material, but also a communal clearinghouse of literary minutiae and esoterica. They congregated whenever the shop was open to swap stories and share their passion for books. And Flam, who felt an outcast elsewhere, now found himself part of this eccentric little community.
If the group that gathered daily in the bookshop helped to make Flam feel welcome, it was Turner who made Flam feel at home. Mr. Page Turner was no simple monger of books. He had attended several universities, and had earned undergraduate and post-grad degrees in English Literature, Classical Studies, and Philosophy before profound disillusionment with academic politics, and some tragic event oft hinted at, but never related, ended his quest to become a tenured professor. The discussions over which Turner presided still retained an academic timbre, even if they were at times somewhat chaotic and rambling.
In the beginning, Flam proved merely a source of entertainment, but before long the eccentric inner circle of book worshippers, without it having been agreed upon or even discussed, was collectively working to polish and refine the boy’s knowledge and appreciation of the written word. Whenever Flam finished a book, they would quiz him on his understanding of its message or theme, and point out the intricacies of the wordsmithing or brilliance of the dialogue.
Poetry had previously constituted only a small portion of Flam’s reading, but in the bookstore he was systematically exposed to the classics of verse. Turner, who had written a Master’s thesis on the poetry of Blake, was the prime instigator, laying out an ambitious roadmap from Ovid to Ginsberg, but disguising its sophistic nature. Whenever they found themselves alone, Turner would habitually pluck a book from the stacks, and have Flam proceed to read poems aloud as the older man went about his chores.
“Flam, I have a yen for some Yeats,” he might say. “Please read this to me while I alphabetize these paperbacks.” And Flam, thinking he was doing the bookseller a favour, would wade into the words proffered to him.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Turner would interrupt to correct any mispronunciation, to explain a word, or to coach him on how best to recite a passage. And then the bookmonger would have the boy repeat key passages over and over again, unveiling their imagery and poetic poignancy.
“That’s incredibly beautiful,” Turner would sigh from the perch of his stepladder as he tried to find room on the shelves for his latest arrivals. “Don’t you agree, Flam? Do you know what was meant by ‘Perne in a gyre?’ No? Your Irish ancestors would. Did you know Yeats came from County Sligo, just as your mother’s people did? He’s referring to the blur of a spinning wheel, just as each successive human life melds into the one before it. Read it again, my young recitalist. Stand up on the stool and enunciate it loudly so I can hear it over here, and while you do, see if you can glean the jewel of wisdom that lies nestled amongst those exquisite words.”
In this way Flam came to know the giants of literature the way his peers knew the names of pop stars. And while many other boys his age might be able to enumerate the batting averages and recount exploits of their favourite baseball players, Flam could recite excerpts from classic poems with insight, fervour, and theatrical flair.
Chapter 3
The precious hours spent in Turner’s Bookstore became Flam’s only respite from the misery that permeated the rest of his gloomy life. When he moved on to attend the large and crowded local high school, he still made no friends, not even among the other outcasts and social misfits. Flam did once try to join the school’s computer club, hoping to find camaraderie among those who shared his virtuosity with the digital devices, but there also he could not penetrate the tightly-knit clique, and was ridiculed and ostracized until he quit.
The bullying that Flam continued to encounter was subtler, but no less pervasive or cruel, although the name-calling was perhaps a bit more creative. The Grubby and Flam Chop of grade school was supplemented by Rack of Flam, Flamingo, Grub-a-Dub-Dub, and Flim Flam Man, among others.
In contrast to the cruel attention of his peers, Flam found his teachers lazy and uninterested, and although he soaked up as much as he could from them, he gave nothing back. He wrapped himself in his introversion, like some semi-perfect cloak of invisibility, minimized the contact with his peers, endured their taunts and assaults when they came, and counted the minutes until he could go running back to the bookstore.
At home, Mary’s missionary sternness continued—a thing that Flam, in moments of black humour, thought of as his particular cross to bear. He was unable, however, to find any humour in Steve’s dreaded irregular appearances, which often precipitated beatings and hateful verbal tirades. Steve’s disdain for his son had now evolved to focus on the freshly-teenaged Flam’s seeming lack of manhood, as puberty lagged in delivering its overt signs of masculinity.
Only once did Flam try to fight back against his father’s abuse, and it ended up costing him dearly. On that occasion, Mary had taken advantage of Steve’s unplanned, drunken appearance at home to rush off to a special night church service honouring a visiting bishop.
Mary had barely closed the door behind her when Flam, alerted by the crazed look in his father’s face, tried to crawl into his book-walled refuge beneath the dining room table. Steve had anticipated this, and grabbed Flam from behind, spinning him around and back into the open.
“Oh no, you don’t, twirp. You stay out here. You and me are going to have a little talk,” Steve commanded, reaching menacingly for the boy. That was when Flam made the mistake of trying to resist, forcefully shoving away his father’s arm and kicking out at his shin. Steve bellowed in outrage, and flung Flam up against a wall with a force that sent Mary’s religious icons swaying on the wall. While a rake of yellow-stained fingers grabbed both skin and fabric in the front of Flam’s shirt, rendering him immobile, Steve’s other hand balled into a fist that wavered menacingly in front of the boy’s fear-stricken face.
“You puny piece of shit!” Steve screamed at his terrified son, the reek of alcohol wafting from the man’s breath in concert with his mounting anger. “Look at you! How did I ever end up stuck with a girly-boy like you?”
“Leave me alone! I didn’t do anything to you,” Flam protested, desperately squirming to try to pull himself free of Steve’s grasp before the onset of the inevitable blows. The boy’s struggles tore and stretched his T-shirt, but this only served to entangle him further as his father wound up the slack into a tighter knot, which lifted Flam up onto his toes and began cutting into his flesh.
“What do you want from me?” Flam began to scream, tears erupting. “Stop it . . . you’re hurting me!”
His entreaty was met with a slap across his ear.
“Shut up, you little cry baby . . . you make me sick. I hate everything about you.”
“Please, Dad, let me go, don’t hit me, leave me alone.” The words were barely intelligible through the heaving sobs now coming from Flam.
“I said shut up. Don’t call me Dad . . . you’re no son of mine. That goddamned bitch has turned you into some kind of a faggot freak, starting with that fucking stupid name of yours.”
Now the blows began to